Each issue of Wood News , our online woodworking magazine, features a different home workshop, and we've compiled 10 of these features here. Browsing them is a great way to find new ideas on how to set up your own shop, or if you just want to see innovative ways other woodworkers have approached the various shop setup issues we all face. From space considerations and smart storage ideas to the various tool combinations and approaches to woodworking, you'll find something here that's really interesting. Click each image to take a look!

My dedicated shop space is about 8′ x 4′, the rest is a one car garage that needs to stay open for my wife’s car. I will sometimes set up some plywood and sawhorses in that space for assembly though. The section that is my dedicated shop has a floor made of 2″x6″ lumber stretched out over joists on top of dirt. It is an old floor filled with knot holes, cracked or broken boards (with temporary plywood screwed over them) and just generally uneven. If I cannot build a shed as my new workshop I will be looking at redoing the floor in my current space. Not sure how I would go about it though.
The cost of being disorganized is time. It takes me ten times as long to work on a project when I am scouring the room looking for a drill bit, the right screws, or trying to remember where I last used one of my 10 tape measures. Workshop organization is an ongoing project. As you acquire more tools, you have to rearrange your shop to work in storage for those new items. So mobile and modular storage, wherever possible will save you time down the road. Here are some amazing Workshop Organization Ideas that I hope will inspire you!
The final corner of my shop houses my Grizzly G0703P mobile dust collector. I upgraded to this unit shortly after setting up this shop as my last dust collector was setup to exhaust air outside. The separator I made for it wasn’t efficient enough to modify again for a canister filter for exhausting air inside the shop. I really didn’t want to deal with modifying my dust collector again so I got this. Above the dust collector is my retractable air hose reel that I mentioned earlier. I like having this here as the only times I use compressed air is to fill up the my vehicle tires or to spray a finish which I do outside.
It might not be the easiest project in this list, but if you already have some experience with wood cutting and joinery, it won’t be any hassle at all. Thanks to the extremely detailed instructions it shouldn’t really be a problem even if you’re not very familiar with woodworking. This could actually be a great project for refining your woodworking skills as a beginner!
These things may be tiny in size, but building one is not that easy. It takes some serious woodworking knowledge and skill to build a nice wooden mobile stand. When I first saw one online, I just couldn’t resist thinking of buying one. But when I saw the price, I was forced to rethink. Also, a woodwork lover like me cannot be contained with just one piece and I was not willing to spend on more than one. So instead I decided to build myself one. Yes, it took some doing but the final result was satisfying. Luckily, I found this awesome tutorial online that helped me build my first ever wooden phone holder.
You can also use Google image search to research a project. Unlike the PDF search, the image search provides a photo of what the project will look like, which is helpful in determining if you want to pursue building it. By doing an image search for how to build a step stool, you will have a ton of options that all lead to woodworking plans of various quality. (The how to part of these is important—otherwise you’ll just get pictures of step stools.)